Twenty-third Sunday after Pentecost

November 7-8, 2009

“Grace, Mercy, and Hospitality”

1 Kings 17:8-16

Grace, mercy and peace be unto you from God our heavenly Father, through our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

You’ve probably experienced something like this before: you’re driving in an unfamiliar area, and you’re lost. Seeing someone who looks like a local, you pull over to ask for directions. And he begins to tell you how to get where you’re going. He says, “Go down to the second crossroad, take a right, stay on that road for about two miles…no, wait, that road’s blocked off for construction. If you go up to the next intersection and take a left, go about a mile, and…no, that won’t work either. You know what? You can’t get there from here.” And ever so helpful, he walks away.

If you’ve experienced something like that, then you know the struggle of finding different ways to get somewhere. And that came to mind as I read through our Old Testament lesson for today, and wondered what it really has to do with our lives. The obvious thought is that God provides for us, which He does, and it’s a good thought to keep in mind. But He doesn’t usually provide for us in such a blatantly miraculous way. Picking up a loaf of bread at the grocery store is a wonderful thing, but not quite the same as what He did for Elijah and the widow at Zarephath. What’s striking to me is everything around that miracle; how God prepares us, how He breaks into our lives and works in our lives.

There was a severe drought in the land of Israel; a drought that would not pass until God proclaimed its end through the prophet Elijah. In the meantime, God told Elijah to go to a certain place and stay there, and He would send ravens with food for Elijah in the morning and evening, and the prophet could drink from the stream near that place. In that way, God cared for Elijah. But the drought went on; it lasted for three years and six months, during which time that stream dried up. Elijah needed a new place of provision, and that is where our Old Testament lesson today picks up.

“Then the word of the Lord came to Elijah, ‘Arise, go to Zarephath, which belongs to Sidon, and dwell there. Behold, I have commanded a widow there to feed you.’” So Elijah goes to Zarephath, a city in the region of Sidon, which was in ancient Phoenicia, modern day Lebanon. He went, only knowing that God would provide sustenance for him through a widow there. But as the story goes on, it becomes apparent that God hadn’t made this arrangement known to the widow herself. We don’t know how Elijah picked her out, and knew she was the right woman, but he did, and God helped him do it. So he finds the woman, asks her for a drink of water, and while she’s at it, could she give him some bread to eat, too. Now in today’s society, that would seem kind of presumptuous of Elijah, but in that culture, the concept of hospitality dictated that you gave your guest anything he needed, even if it took away from what you needed.

But of course, the woman has a problem. She has no bread baked, and what little flour and oil she has left is going to make a last meal for her and her son. It’s the last food they have, and they are preparing to die soon because of that, due to the drought. But Elijah responds by saying, “Do not fear; go and do as you have said. But first make me a little cake of it and bring it to me, and afterward make something for yourself and your son. For thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, ‘The jar of flour shall not be spent, and the jug of oil shall not be empty, until the day that the Lord sends rain upon the earth.’” That’s an amazing thing for Elijah to say; and perhaps even more amazing is the fact that the woman believes this word, makes his meal, then some for her and her son, and just as the prophet had said, the flour and oil did not run out. They continued to be fed “for many days,” which means, a long time.

God provides, and not always in the way we expect Him to do it. God’s way is not our way. Who would think that flour and oil could last indefinitely, and not be used up? Who in Elijah’s day would think that God would miraculously intervene in the life of a widow who was not among the people of Israel? It’s God’s way, and that’s why we call it grace; God’s choice, for God’s reasons. God deals favorably with whomever He chooses, and you don’t have to be genetically descended from Abraham to find God’s mercy. God will provide all things in accordance with His will, even when we have no resources of our own, and everything seems to be against us.

For example, the cross. We all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. We deserve to die; we deserve God’s wrath and eternal punishment. Yet we live; and God sent His Son, Jesus Christ, to live and die and rise again for us, and He has forgiven us, and rescued us, and promises that His love and mercy will never run out. He promises that we will live with Him forever, even after it seems that death has won out over us. He has paid the price and redeemed us. And He comes to us in miraculous ways through His Word and Sacraments. In baptismal grace, He feeds us with food far greater than the bread made by the widow of Zarephath. He feeds us with His very body and blood in the Holy Supper, granting us His gifts of forgiveness, life and salvation in this Eucharistic feast. And He fills us with His grace, His mercy, and the ability to show true hospitality, exemplified in the actions of the poor widow toward Elijah in our text.

What does such hospitality look like in our day? Service toward others. I will never forget Pat and Helen; an elderly couple who were shut-ins in my first congregation. Talk about hospitality; the first time I went to visit, Helen ushered me in through a downstairs door in their bi-level house. There I met Pat, who was sitting on a stool at the bar he had set up. And before I could say anything, he said, “Welcome, Pastor. Have a beer.” I must have looked a little surprised, because he said, “You do like beer, don’t you?” And I assured him that I do; I just don’t normally have one at 9:30 in the morning. So he served me; and Helen brought out some good things to eat, and served me. And they served me with their attention and conversation, and by the time I left, having served them with Holy Communion, I wasn’t sure who had really served whom. It was that way every time I visited them, and they didn’t just do that for me. They had an eagerness to serve others with care and grace.

But many of us are good at serving our friends and family. Biblical hospitality goes even farther than that. It involves serving those we don’t know; attending to strangers who are poor, sick, or in need. The widow in our text didn’t know who Elijah was, but she took him in and tended to his needs. The poor woman in our Gospel lesson today showed compassion and mercy toward those she didn’t know by putting her meager offering into the box. All of us have the opportunity to show such hospitality later this month by helping to serve Thanksgiving dinner to the poor and needy of Michigan City. We have the opportunity to share the love and compassion of Christ with people around us, those we know and those we don’t know, every day.

This morning, we recognize the value and importance of deaconess ministry, which is a ministry of mercy. The Lutheran Deaconess Association has been at this work for 90 years now; a deaconess community made up of women who exemplify Christian hospitality through acts of love, mercy and compassion. They serve as an example for all of us that we are, in our daily lives, the hands, the feet, the voice, of Christ Himself. Filled with God’s grace and empowered for service through the gifts He brings to us in Word and Sacrament, we are able to go out into the world with this calling of love, to know and to live the mercy of Christ in the midst of a world that desperately needs the light of His presence. You are empowered for service, because He has come to you again this day, and given you His Word of grace, that your sins are forgiven in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.